Cold
by SlimyChild
Summary: It's cold in Norway. Rated T for Depression.


It's cold. It's numb.

It's a nice break.

Norway sighs and leans back. The pure, white snow whirls around in his vision, and the touch of ice on skin leaves a strange sensation on his face. His breath leaves a white trail in the air, and disperses into the cool night. He closes his eyes for a bit. The cold starts piling up on his eyelids, and he manages a halfhearted smile.

Hm, he thinks. How unlike the old days.

When the snow piled up all around him, and he would dance and play with the fae, mind untainted by war and pain and bloodshed and humans. When the trolls would lumber around in the mountains and under lakes, mostly undisturbed. When he would run and play amongst the Huldra, unaware of the grave danger he was putting himself in. The witches would teach him spells and runes, and even a few of the generally evil kind had taken a soft spot to him. His innocent laughter would ring out all through the mountains, and the little animals would run away from him. That is, until the fae coaxed them to let him pet the fluffy little things.

He barely noticed the snow piling up on his body.

He remembered when people started populating his little paradise. Unfamiliar people trooped in, and he could feel them spreading. From his feet to his chest to his head. It wasn't unpleasant, but it wasn't familiar either. He hadn't learnt not to trust others, and had went up to the big, burly men.

Norway winced. He didn't want to remember that.

He tried to fastforward to happier times, but all that flashed in his mind was bloodshed and Celtics and a blade in his hand. No, no no don't remember he didn't want to remember please stop-

He remember the start of Christianity. He had been baptised against his will, and the Trolls had started avoiding him. A little part of him died inside. He had just stood, watching them, spent so much time sitting with them...

They rejected him.

Fine, so be it.

He didn't need his huge, lumbering companions anyway.

Norway had tried to adjust to the pain. Pain. He distinctly remembered the feeling of sword on arm and blood on snow. He had remembered dried tears, tree barks. Hanging upside down from trees, distracting himself with work, rolling down mountains. He remembered running to his room in the middle of a meal, feeling the tears welling up in his eyes when someone asked him how he was faring. He wanted to scream everything, out into the heavens. It hurt. It hurt, it hurt so badly. He used to talk to his magical friends when he felt lost, broken, hurt, happy, esctatic, whatever. He would tell them everything, spill out all his secrets.

And then he had been dragged to a church and been forced to be baptised.

The trolls started avoiding him, and convinced he had done something wrong, the rest of his magical friends had left him.

They.

Left.

Him.

He couldn't sleep from that night onwards. Not well, anyway.

All the old pain came crashing down on him. Fear, betrayal, loss, abuse, everything. It happened when he was out staring into the distance, pondering the magical folk's rejection. He had crumpled onto his knees instantly, screaming and crying and why why pleASE PLEASE I'M SORRY WHAT DID I DO PLEASE STOP STOP BLOOD EVERYWHERE MAKE IT GO AWAY STOPPE STOPPE STOPPE FÅ DET TIL Å STOPPE-

Mor, vennglist...

He isolated himself for quite some time.

Then it had just stopped.

It was a year ago, he thought. He had walked out of his room voluntarily for the first time in decades, to his fellow Nordic's relieved and smiling and crying faces. He's out, they said. _He's out._

Norway hadn't felt anything. He didn't hug them back. He just numbly stood there.

It was strange. He didn't feel anything except a huge empty space in his chest. His face hadn't shown any expression, but it wasn't a mask this time. His curl didn't bob cheerily, and even he noticed that his entire aura had gone a muted tone of grey. His eyes were glassy. His magical friends were back, but they didn't do anything to help. He couldn't bring himself to care about anything.

If you stood next to him, even the coldest of nations would start to chill inside under his lifelessness.

He didn't understand. He didn't want to understand. He didn't want to die, but he didn't want to live. He was just... There. All the pain was repressed, and all that was left of one of the happiest nations on Earth was an empty shell of a human being. A broken soul.

Norway didn't notice that he was completely covered in snow. He didn't register that he couldn't breathe, and he didn't register the frantic sound of snow crunching under boots. He could only register the cold. The ice cold.

In his heart.


End file.
